Tuesday, March 26, 2013

On Fridays when we'd had a particularly good week, my eighth grade literature teacher treated us to an episode of the 1960s sci-fi series The Twilight Zone, where nothing was as it seemed on the surface and the meaning of the plot eluded the viewer until the very last moments of the show. Strange as it seems, that show is the only thing that comes close to describing my feels during my transition from Seattle to Mexico over the last month in the context of marijuana legalization and the U.S. War on Drugs.

I left Seattle just after Washington State voted to legalize the production and sale of marijuana. Medical marijuana dispensaries had already begun popping up all over the city, and the post-election news was filled with images of clouds of pot smoke rising from beneath the Space Needle as Seattleites exercised their new rights. Currently with a medical marijuana license, but soon with just an ID, one can visit a dispensary, and the experience is exceedingly pleasant. Products vary from traditional "dried flowers" to candies, teas, oils, sodas, and even spaghetti sauce. The staff are incredibly knowledgeable, giving advice on what product is best for pain, as a sleep aid, or for specific psychotropic effects. They also know where the product comes from--if it's locally grown, organic, and if a strain will likely be available again.

I was well aware that things would be different in Mexico, but was curious to see how things had changed since the decriminalization of a suite of drugs in 2009 (I lived in Mexico prior to the passage of the 2009 law.) It is now not a criminal offense to possess up to 5 grams of marijuana (about four joints), and I wondered how this would change the dynamic in people's daily lives-- would there be less fear of the police? Would people be more open about consumption?

Unfortunately little has changed. Marijuana is still ubiquitous-- readily available at parties and in clubs, but the climate of fear is the same. According to a 2011 report by el Colectivo por una Politica Integral Hacia las Drogas A.C. (Collective for a Comprehensive Drug Policy, or CuPHID), 70 percent of people who use drugs in Mexico have been arrested by police forces, with the same percentage also claiming to be victims of police extortion. Unfortunately the issue runs even deeper than this, as other posts on this blog explain in depth. I recently met with a mother searching for her son who was disappeared a year ago. As she told me her story, she pulled out her pink, pocket-sized notebook, which is full of the hand-written investigative work she's done since her son's disappearance. She explained that she doesn't trust the police, and that they wouldn't help her anyway unless she were to pay them.

Since 2006, more than 47,000 people in Mexico have died as a result of the Drug War, according to Mexican government statistics. According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, there have been 250 official disappearance cases over that same period, with fear likely keeping many more from coming forward. Meanwhile the U.S. channels millions of dollars-worth of military aid to bolster the Mexican army's efforts to combat narcotrafficking, while in two of its own states citizens have passed measures legalizing marijuana with essentially nothing in the way of federal response.

The Twilight Zone's intro promises a journey to a dimension whose "boundaries are that of imagination." But this is not an imaginary space, not a sci-fi thriller. These are people's lives, their daily realities. Marijuana has resulted in no deaths by overdose, is sold and consumed peacefully in parts of the U.S., and is demanded as a recreational substance in both the U.S. and Mexico. Yet the heavy toll here in Mexico, throughout Latin America, and in poor neighborhoods in the States is unabated. This is evidently a price our government is willing to pay, but are we?

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